Queen Elizabeth Hospital

for Children

Hackney Road, Bethnal Green, E2 8PS

Medical dates:

Medical character:

1867 - 1996

Acute paediatrics

The Dispensary for Women and Children in Virginia Road, Bethnal Green, was founded in 1867 by two Quaker sisters, Ellen and Mary Philips, in the wake of a cholera epidemic. They soon decided that only children should be treated; the work was transferred shortly after to 125 Hackney Road, as the North Eastern Hospital for Children. The Hospital had 12 cots.

In 1870 the freehold of a building on the corner of Hackney Road and Goldsmiths Row was acquired and the Hospital moved there. During the late 19th century new ward buildings were added and the Hospital was greatly expanded.

In 1907 it was renamed the Queen's Hospital for Children.

In 1911 a country branch for convalescent children - the Little Folks Home - was opened in Bexhill-on-Sea.

In 1938 a new Out-Patients Department was opened.

During WW2 the Bexhill-on-Sea branch was evacuated to Woodham Rise in Woking.

The Shadwell branch closed in 1963 and the Hackney Road branch joined with the Hackney Group, forming the Hackney and Queen Elizabeth Group. In 1968 it was placed under the administration of the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. In 1994, when the Hospital for Sick Children became an NHS Trust, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital joined the East London and The City Health Authority until 1996, when it became part of the Royal Hospitals Trust (now Barts Health NHS Trust). Services relocated to the Royal London Hospital and the Hackney Road buildings became vacant.

Present status (December 2007)
The 0.64 hectare site remains vacant and is awaiting redevelopment into housing.

Update: July 2016

Planning permission was granted for the site to be redeveloped by Family Mosaic and Rydon into 188 new homes. The original facade on Hackney Road has been retained.

The terraced housing at 337-373 Hackney Road - next to the former Hospital - is privately occupied and Grade II listed. The main Hospital building at 335 Hackney Road is not listed, however.

N.B. Photographs obtained in September 2012

The Hackney Road frontage.

The buildings, as seen from Kay Street, have remained vacant since the Hospital closed in 1996 (above and below).

N.B. Photographs obtained in July 2016

The Mettle&Poise frontage on Hackney Road. The glassed-in balconies are no more but, rather confusingly, the Hospital signage remains on the railings.

It is unclear whether the main entrance of the former Hospital is in use.

New apartments have been built along Goldsmiths Row at the back of the Hackney Road building.

The Little Folks Home, Cooden Sea Road, Little Common, just outside Bexhill-on-Sea, was a convalescent home with 36 beds for patients from the Queen's Hospital for Children. Boys and girls aged between 3 and 14 years could spend as long as 50 days there. During 1929, 257 patients stayed there. The Home had been purchased and was partly maintained by the readers of 'Little Folks'.

Published by London Cassell & Co between 1871 and 1933, 'Little Folks' was a children's magazine. It encouraged its readers to donate money for projects that would improve the lives of less fortunate children. In this way it provided institutions such as children's wards and homes, and amentities such as public drinking fountains.

The Little Folks Home was demolished in 1975 and the site redeveloped.

The Little Folks Ward at the North-Eastern Hospital for Children at the turn of the century, when the Hospital had 114 beds.